Robert Stackowiak works as an independent consultant, advisor, and author. He is a former data & artificial intelligence architect and technology business strategist at the Microsoft Technology Center in Chicago, and previously worked in similar roles at Oracle and IBM. He has conducted business discovery workshops, ideation workshops, and technology architecture sessions with many of North America’s leading-edge companies across a variety of industries and with government agencies. Bob has also spoken at numerous industry conferences internationally, served as a guest instructor at various universities, and is an author of several books. You can follow him on Twitter @rstackow and read his articles and posts on LinkedIn.
Tracey Kelly is Envisioning Lead with the Catalyst team at Microsoft. She has been leading the design thinking training through North America and Europe to help Microsoft technology-focused architects and business leadership transition and transform to customer-centric and business outcome solutions. Tracey is also on the board of the Women’s Technology Coalition and a former Women in Technology Director in Dallas. She leads design workshops and customer strategy sessions and has a long 20-year history of technology and design leadership at Fortune 500 companies to drive innovation.
Learn the fundamentals of Design Thinking and how to apply Design Thinking techniques in defining software development and AI solutions. Design Thinking is an approach to innovation which identifies problems and generates solution ideas that can be rapidly proven through prototyping.
This book provides a brief history of Design Thinking and an overview of the process. It then drills down into more detail regarding methods and tools used in a Design Thinking workshops leading to useful prototypes. Guidance is provided on:
Preparing for a Design Thinking Workshop
Uncovering potential business problems that might be solved
Prioritizing potential solutions
Identifying and characterizing stakeholders
Choosing the right prototypes for development
Limiting scope and best practices in prototype building
The book concludes with a discussion of best practices in operationalizing successful prototypes, and describes change management techniques critical for successful adoption. You can use the knowledge gained from reading this book to incorporate Design Thinking techniques in your software development and AI projects, and assure timely and successful delivery of solutions.
You will:
Gain foundational knowledge of what Design Thinking is and when to apply the technique
Discover preparation and facilitation techniques used in workshops
Know how ideas are generated and then validated through prototyping
Understand implementation best practices, including change management considerations